June 09, 2014

Column: The Continuing Obamacare Nightmare

While President Obama diverts the nation's attention with his other myriad scandals, the Obamacare Express continues to careen off the rails, leaving a wide path of destruction and rendering its supporters defenseless.

The latest outrage, in a yearslong string, is that at least 4 million of the 8 million total Obamacare sign-ups contain flawed applications, according to a report by House Republicans.

But this isn't some arbitrarily divined number chosen by Republicans for political purposes. It is based on a chart prepared by federal Obamacare contractor Serco that shows more than 4 million application discrepancies as of May 27. These include inconsistencies regarding income, citizenship and immigration, residency, incarceration, Indian status, Social Security numbers, and eligibility for another federal health program.

According to The Daily Caller, more than 1.6 million annual and current income inconsistencies were identified, but none of them had been resolved by May 27, and only 62,000 of the 1.4 million anomalies involving citizenship and immigration problems had been resolved. A total of only 97,000 of the 4.1 million discrepancies had been addressed by the end of May.

Is this any way to run even a woefully bloated, incompetent and bureaucrat-infested government?

It's not as if this just happened serendipitously. The Obama White House knew, in its rush to pile up applications no matter how flawed in order to meet its self-imposed deadline, that it was cutting significant corners. This arrogant administration failed to create an income verification system in 2013 before it launched the notorious Obamacare website, HealthCare.gov, and opted to approve Obamacare applications without any verification of the customers' representations of their income.

Can you imagine any business running itself this recklessly? A bank? It's not conceivable. And it won't do for people to excuse this as merely the way government works. If they make that excuse, they are admitting that the government should never be entrusted with one-seventh of the economy, which it shouldn't. This wasn't a case of mere bureaucratic ineptitude; it was a conscious decision at the highest executive level to cut corners for political purposes, and it screams out for accountability.

Of the latest Obamacare nightmare revelations, these application inconsistencies are only the tip of the iceberg. Consider:

--At least 2.9 million Americans who signed up for Medicaid coverage pursuant to Obamacare changes have not had their applications processed, meaning some low-income people will be prevented from accessing benefits they are legally entitled to receive.

--According to the Congressional Budget Office, only a small fraction of the uninsured will end up paying the Obamacare mandate penalty, as 87 percent will claim an exemption. Not only does this make a mockery of the ill-conceived penalty but also it increases the odds of an insurance industry "death spiral" and puts Obamacare even further out of budgetary balance. These consequences will be perfectly copasetic with Obama, who abhors the insurance industry, desires complete government control of health care and relishes further subsidizing of those not paying their own way as another proud notch in his redistribution belt. What a great day for Obama! Everything he promises turns to mush, but that mush just happens to be perfectly consistent with the deplorable direction in which he wants to take the country. Though the overwhelming majority of the uninsured will sidestep the mandated penalty, absent court intervention, there will be no such leniency for families and businesses who
seek to avoid the mandate on moral grounds because it forces them to provide coverage for abortion-inducing drugs and devices.

--The Congressional Budget Office said Obamacare would reduce the deficit by more than $120 billion in a decade, but in April, the CBO quietly conceded that the projection wasn't reliable. Shocker.

--The Washington Times reports that as a direct result of the Obamacare scheme to make health care more affordable, insurance premiums will be increasing in Colorado, Vermont (from 9.8 percent to 18.3 percent), Kentucky (up to a 17 percent increase by 2015) and Virginia (as much as 22 percent). This is an inevitable trend we're seeing all over the country, as everyone who understands socialism anticipated.

--Stephen Parente, a professor of health economics at the University of Minnesota, and Michael Ramlet of American Action Forum project nationwide increases for the Obamacare silver plan of some 25 percent for individuals and families within five years, as well as an increase in the uninsured. Similarly bad results are projected for other categories of plans. This means that despite government spending increases, health care costs will still be higher, which is to say nothing of the reduced health care choices and deteriorating quality of treatment.

--Though Obamacare promised to reduce pressure on emergency room treatment by giving people greater access to primary care, we're witnessing just the opposite result in many hospitals in Kentucky and across the nation, which are experiencing a surge of newly insured Medicaid patients going to emergency rooms.

--A headline reads, "NC Small Business Will Be 'Hit Especially Hard' By ObamaCare, May Drop Insurance For Workers." Another reads, "Obamacare Hits Academia, Hard."

I'm just part way through the list; shall I continue? Sorry. Out of space. But I trust you're getting my drift.